Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale/Appendix C

by William Shakespeare

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APPENDIX C

The History of the Play

The known history of Love's Labour's Lost begins with the evidence found on the title-page of the earliest edition,^[1] the Quarto of 1598. This reads: 'A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost. As it vvas presented before her Highnes this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakespere.' Her Highness was Queen Elizabeth and the Christmas performance alluded to probably took place during the season of December, 1597–January, 1598.^[2] The statement that the play had been newly corrected and augmented is substantiated beyond all question by the text itself, particularly in the fourth and fifth acts.^[3]

Love's Labour's Lost is the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays concerning which we have notice of a special performance at court and probably also the earliest to name Shakespeare as author on the printed title-page. It is mentioned in Meres' Palladis Tamia (1598), third in the list of six comedies ascribed to the poet, and again in the same year in Robert Tofte's Alba, where the allusion is casual and more complimentary to the actors than to the dramatist:

'Loues Labor Lost, I once did see a Play
Ycleped so, so called to my paine,
Which I to heare to my small Ioy did stay,
Giuing attendance on my froward Dame,
My misgiuing minde presaging to me Ill,
Yet was I drawne to see it gainst my Will.

'This Play no Play, but Plague was vnto me,
For there I lost the Loue I liked most:
And what to others seemde a Iest to be,
I that in earnest found vnto my cost:
To euery one (saue me) twas Comicall,
Whilst Tragick like to me it did befall.

'Each Actor plaid in cunning wise his part,
But chiefly Those entrapt in Cupids snare:
Yet all was fained, twas not from the hart,
They seemde to grieue, but yet they felt no care:
Twas I that Griefe (indeed) did beare in brest,
The others did but make a show in Iest.'

The sonnets of Berowne (IV. ii. 110–128) and Longaville (IV. iii. 60–73) and Dumaine's 'ode' (IV. iii. 101–120) were reprinted by William Jaggard in 1599 in the pirated volume called The Passionate Pilgrim, and Dumaine's poem was also included in the anthology, England's Helicon, in 1600. Later William Drummond of Hawthornden lists the comedy as one of the 'Bookes red be me, anno 1606,' when Drummond was staying in London. Property rights in the published play are affirmed when, on January 22, 1606/7, Burby, the publisher of the 1598 Quarto (who seems not to have entered it himself), transferred Love's Labour's Lost, along with Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of a Shrew to Nicholas Linge. Less than a year later Linge surrendered all three plays (November 19, 1607) to John Smethwick, who was later one of the partners in the Folio Shakespeare.

Though probably never notably popular, Love's Labour's Lost showed unusual staying powers during the Shakespearean era. First produced at the opening of the poet's career, it was rewritten, as we have seen, in 1597–8 for the particular amusement of Queen Elizabeth. A little over a year after her death it was again selected for court performance in order to divert her successor, Anne of Denmark (Queen of James I), as is witnessed by the following very interesting letter from Sir Walter Cope to Viscount Cranborne (i.e. Sir Robert Cecil, later Lord Salisbury):

 

'Sir,—I haue sent and bene all thys morning huntyng for players Juglers & Such kinde of Creaturs, but fynde them harde to fynde; wherefore leauing notes for them to seek me, Burbage ys come, and sayes there is no new playe that the quene hath not seene, but they haue reuyued an olde one, cawled Loves Labore Lost, which for wytt & mirthe he sayes will please her exceedingly. And thys ys appointed to be playd to morrowe night at my Lord of Sowthamptons, unless yow send a wrytt to remove the corpus cum causa to your howse in Strande. Burbage ys my messenger ready attending your pleasure.' This is dated '1604,' and the performance referred to is fixed by Mr. Chambers as between January 8 and January 15, 1604/5.^[4] The audit office accounts for 1604–5 record the acting 'By his Majesty’s players' of 'A play of Loues Labours Lost' between New Year’s Day and Twelfth Day (January 6).

A certain degree of continued popularity is indicated by the publication of another Quarto edition of Love's Labour's Lost in 1631, during the period, that is, between the appearance of the first and second Folio editions of Shakespeare, when relatively few of his plays were being called for in separate form. The statement on the title-page of this Quarto, 'As it was acted by his Majesty's Servants at the Blackfriars and the Globe,' if correct, proves that revivals must have occurred after 1608–9, when Shakespeare's company first began to use the Blackfriars' Theatre.

Later the play fell into total obscurity for over a century. No performances or adaptations are known during the period of the Restoration or the first half of the eighteenth century. Dryden in 1672^[5] groups Love's Labour's Lost with The Winter's Tale and Measure for Measure as examples of the worst of Shakespeare's plays, 'which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.' Jeremy Collier (1699) says briefly of it that 'the poet plays the fool egregiously, for the whole play is a very silly one'; and Gildon (1710) brands it as 'one of the worst of Shakespear's Plays, nay, I think I may say, the very worst.'

When As You Like It was revived in 1740, the cuckoo song from the close of Love's Labour's Lost was interpolated into the acting version of the other play, where it long continued to be used.^[6] This would seem to be the only part of Love's Labour's Lost that ever appeared on the eighteenth-century stage. The first known adaptation of our play was printed in 1762 with the title: 'The Students. A Comedy Altered from Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost, and Adapted to the Stage.' Though equipped with elaborate prologue and epilogue in heroic couplets, there is no evidence that this work ever reached the stage for which it had been 'adapted.' Only about 800 lines of the original play are retained;^[7] the characters of Holofernes and Nathaniel are omitted entirely, and the mask of Muscovites and show of Nine Worthies are replaced by a 'comic dance' in dumb-show. The alterations of Shakespeare's main plot are rather remarkable. Berowne puts on a coat intended for Costard, and having thus easily rendered himself irrecognizable, carries messages between the lords and ladies. In this way he secures information enough about the real sentiments of them all to dominate the situation and force an immediate happy ending instead of the year's postponement proposed by the Princess. His closing words express the author's high sense of his improvement upon the original:

'Our wooing now doth end like an old play;
Jack hath his Jill; these ladies' courtesie
Hath nobly made our sport a Comedy.'

Another apparently unacted revision of Love's Labour's Lost, likewise anonymous, is preserved in a single copy at the British Museum, It dates from about the year 1800. This version also eliminates Holofernes and Nathaniel and concludes with the ladies' consent to immediate matrimony, brought about in a manner quite different from that employed in The Students. The characters of Costard and Jaquenetta (Jaquelina) are much romanticized, and they too are made happy at the end. Armado is presented as a demi-villain, and eavesdropping is employed even more copiously than in the original play.

On September 80, 1839, the first recorded performance of Love's Labour's Lost since Shakespearean times was given at Covent Garden. Madame Vestris played Rosaline; Harley, Armado; and Anderson, Berowne. The piece was performed nine times and three slightly differing versions of the acting text were published. In 1857 Samuel Phelps presented the play at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, Phelps himself taking the part of Armado. In 1885 and again in 1907 it was produced at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, as the Shakespeare Birthday play (April 23), Mr. F. R. Benson playing Berowne on the latter occasion. The English Drama Society gave it in Bloomsbury Hall, April 24, 1906. Other productions are recorded by the companies of Charles Fry, Ben Greet, and Florence Glossop-Harris. An acting version, 'adapted by Elsie Fogerty for Girls' Schools,' was published in 1912. Recently, under the management of Miss Lillian Baylis, Love's Labour's Lost has appeared frequently in the repertory of the Royal Victoria Hall ('Old Vic.') in London; e.g. in the spring of 1918 and during the season that began September 22, 1923. The most recent production was that given by the Oxford University Dramatic Society in Wadham College garden, June 21, 1924. The enthusiastic tone of the critics of these late performances^[8] shows that the play is now gaining in the esteem of audiences as during the past generation it has gained in the favor of critics and general readers.

The most important American productions of Love's Labour's Lost were those arranged by Augustin Daly in New York, in 1874 and again in 1891. The German Shakespeare scholar, Rudolph Genée, brought out in 1887 a considerably altered version in three acts for the German stage. In recent times this has usually been supplanted by translations which adhere more closely to the original.

 

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1. Mr. Pollard has argued that this Quarto was probably preceded by a piratical earlier edition of which no trace remains. The evidence is purely bibliographical and circumstantial, but carries weight.
2. The Elizabethan year began with March 25. Hence if the Quarto was printed between January 1 and March 24, 'this last Christmas' would be Christmas, 1598, by our reckoning. Halliwell-Phillipps (Furness, p. 336) suggested a connection of the performance of the play with a recorded payment in December, 1597, 'for altering and making readie of soundrie chambers at Whitehall against Christmas, and for the plaies, and for making readie in the hall for her Maiestie.' Shakespeare's company acted at court on December 26 of both years, 1597 and 1598, and also on the following January 1 (1598 and 1599).
3. See notes on IV. iii, 299–304 and V. ii. 825–830.
4. Elizabethan Stage, iv. 139 f.
5. The Conquest of Granada, Pt. II. Defence of the Epilogue.
6. Cf. Furness, p. 316, note on line 976. Both the cuckoo song and the other song of winter were printed in 1671 in an anthology called The New Academy of Compliments.
7. As counted by F. Schult, Bühnenbearbeitungen von Shakespeares "Love's Labour's Lost," 1910.
8. See reviews, for example, in the Manchester Guardian, September 28, 1923, and June 27, 1924.